THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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MiUt^iU  CDucatiotml  jHonogtapl^js 

EDITED  BY  HENRY  SUZZALLO 

PROFESSOR   OF  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   EDUCATION 
TEACHERS  COLLEGE,  COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


EDUCATION  for  EFFICIENCY 

AND 

THE  NEW  DEFINITION  OF 
THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

BY 

CHARLES  W.  ELIOT 

PRESIDENT  OF   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY,   EMERITUS 


HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

BOSTON,  NEW  YORK  AND  CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Educatioflt 
Library 


CONTENTS 

Introduction v 

I.   Education  for  Efficiency  ...  i 

'^II.  The  New  Definition  of  the  Cultivated 

Man 3' 

Outline 57 


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INTRODUCTION 

The  filial  product  in  teaching 

It  would  be  well  indeed  if  the  teacher  could  see 
his  final  product,  much  as  a  sculptor  beholds  his 
statue.  It  would  be  worth  something  to  to-mor- 
row's teaching  if  he  could  see  the  man  of  his 
moulding,  walking  about  full-grown  among  his 
neighbors,  performing  his  daily  duties  and  graces. 
No  other  measure  of  our  work  equals  the  sight 
of  the  product  put  to  its  full  uses.  It  is  the  best 
corrective  to  our  blunders,  the  quickest  encour- 
agement to  efficient  action. 

But  this  satisfaction  is  reserved  for  the  lesser 
craftsmen  of  life.  It  is  not  given  to  the  teacher 
to  see  the  daily  lesson  emerge  in  the  ultimate 
man.  The  full  power  of  the  teacher  is  exerted  in 
one  generation,  that  of  his  students  in  another. 
For  him  who  teaches  there  is  no  final  measure 
of  the  day's  work.  It  lies  somewhere  beyond  his 
vision  in  time  and  place.  The  next  generation  may 
attempt  a  full  estimate  of  his  labor,  but  he  him- 

V 


INTRODUCTION 

self  may  not.    He  builds  toward  the  dream-image 
of  a  man,  ignorant  of  the  final  approximation. 

The  partial  influence  of  the  teacher 

Even  the  changing  child,  stumbling  youthfully 
over  its  lessons  or  boisterous  at  its  play,  is  no  fair 
measure  of  the  passing  influence  of  the  teacher. 
School  training  is  but  a  small  part  of  life.  Other 
conditions  than  those  of  classroom  have  swayed 
him  for  good  or  evil.  Home  and  community 
have  brought  their  vital  pressure  to  bear.  The 
teacher  has  been  only  one  of  the  artificers  in 
the  making  of  this  changing  personality.  In 
the  maze  of  educative  forces  that  have  made  the 
child  what  it  is,  his  work  is  lost  to  recognition. 

The  criteria  of  teaching 

Where,  then,  shall  the  teacher  find  the  mea- 
sures for  the  hourly  judgment  of  his  teaching.? 
Standards  there  must  be,  if  the  intricate  minis- 
try of  teaching  is  to  become  more  than  a  crude 
art  where  blind  faith  and  subtle  intuition,  and  the 
crude  methods  of  trial  and  error,  work  out  their 
ends  together.  Such  standards  are  at  hand  to 
vi 


INTRODUCTION 

make  teaching  a  rational  profession.  They  are 
found  in  those  qualities  of  the  human  personality 
which  have  an  abiding  worth  under  the  tests  of 
our  civilization.  They  are  the  measures  of  per- 
sonal culture  and  social  efficiency.  The  teaching 
that  fosters  these  ends  succeeds;  the  teaching 
which  neglects  them  fails. 

What,  then,  are  the  marks  of  culture  and  effi- 
ciency }  We  present  here  an  interpretation,  —  the 
definitions  of  Mr.  Charles  W.  Eliot.  For  forty 
years  president  of  America's  oldest  and  greatest 
university,  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
an  active  leader  in  the  reform  of  our  lower  schools, 
and  for  the  same  period  of  time  a  distinguished 
leader  in  our  national  life,  no  one  is  better  fitted 
than  he  to  suggest  standards  for  the  guidance  of 
those  who  will  teach  our  citizens.  The  two  ad- 
dresses, "Education  for  Efficiency"  and  "The 
Definition  of  the  Cultivated  Man,"  constitute  the 
treatment  of  one  problem  from  two  points  of 
view.  The  scholar  or  the  teacher  who  has  long 
been  used  to  a  definition  in  terms  of  culture  will 
readily  recognize  his  own  method  of  approach ; 
no  less  will  the  man  of  affairs  who  has  been  wont 
vii 


INTRODUCTION 

to  measure  the  worth  of  schools  in  terms  of  the 
efficient  life.  It  is  the  hope  of  the  editor  and  the 
publishers  that  the  contents  of  this  volume  will 
contribute  to  a  wider  and  better  understanding  of 
the  aims  and  standards  of  our  education. 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Education  for  efficiency  is  my  subject.  By  effi- 
ciency I  mean  effective  power  for  work  and  ser- 
vice during  a  healthy  and  active  life.  This  effect- 
ive power  every  individual  man  or  woman  should 
desire  and  strive  to  become  possessed  of ;  and  to 
the  training  and  development  of  this  power  the 
education  of  each  and  every  person  should  be 
directed.  The  efficient  nation  will  be  the  nation 
made  up,  by  aggregation,  of  individuals  possess- 
ing this  effective  power;  and  national  education 
will  be  effective  in  proportion  as  it  secures  in  the 
masses  the  development  of  this  power  and  its 
application  in  infinitely  various  forms  to  the 
national  industries  and  the  national  service. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that  this  education  for  effi- 
ciency is  not  a  training  which  should  cease  with 
youth.  On  the  contrary,  it  should  be  prolonged 
through  adult  years,  until  the  powers  of  the  mind 
I 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

and  body  begin  with  added  years  to  decline.  It 
has  been  too  much  the  custom  to  think  of  edu- 
cation as  an  affair  of  youth,  and  even  of  the  ear- 
lier years  of  youth ;  but  it  really  should  be  the 
work  of  the  whole  life.  Because  the  large  ma- 
jority of  American  children  cease  to  go  to  school 
by  the  time  they  are  fourteen  years  of  age,  it  by 
no  means  follows  that  their  education  should 
cease  at  that  early  age.  More  and  more,  of  late, 
regular  and  formal  provision  for  a  continued  edu- 
cation is  made  in  public  school  systems,  through 
beneficent  endowments  and  by  private  enterprise. 
The  prolongation  of  the  period  of  formal  edu- 
cation for  a  considerable  minority  of  American 
children,  and  the  provision  of  summer  schools, 
evening  schools,  trade  schools,  correspondence 
schools,  business  colleges,  and  reading  circles  of 
many  sorts,  with  public  libraries  and  book  clubs, 
illustrate  the  increasing  prevalence  of  the  new 
idea  that  education  is  to  be  prolonged  through 
adult  life,  and  may  be  carried  on  in  a  systematic 
and  active  way  long  after  the  individual  has  begun 
to  earn  his  livelihood  in  whole  or  in  part. 

Now  all  education  at  every  stage  of  life  com- 

2 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

prehends  two  processes  —  the  training  of  powers 
and  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.  Childhood  and 
youth  are  the  time  for  acquiring  new  mental 
processes  and  functions  and  for  exercising  and 
strengthening  the  memory.  The  child  initiates 
new  processes  of  thought  and  establishes  new 
mental  habits  much  more  easily  than  the  adult ; 
but  the  adult,  with  trained  powers,  has  an  im- 
mense advantage  over  the  child  in  the  acquisition 
of  information.  The  important  thing  in  child- 
hood is,  therefore,  to  train  the  child  in  as  large  a 
variety  of  mental  processes  as  possible,  and  to  es- 
tablish as  many  useful  mental  habits  as  possible. 
During  this  training  an  immense  body  of  infor- 
mation will  be  incidentally  acquired,  but  not  so 
rapidly  as  the  same  person  grown  up  can  acquire 
it.  Several  years  ago  I  gave  a  demonstration  that 
a  good  high  school  graduate  about  eighteen  years 
old  could  do  in  fifteen  hours  all  the  examples  in 
arithmetic  which  the  grammar  school  children  in 
the  same  town  did  in  two  years,  giving  one  fifth 
of  their  school-time  to  the  subject  in  each  year, 
after  having  studied  arithmetic  in  the  primary 
classes  —  that  is,  a  youth  of  eighteen  years  could 
3 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

do  in  fifteen  hours  what  grammar  school  children 
about  twelve  years  of  age  required  two  fifths  of 
their  school-time  for  a  whole  year  to  accomplish. 
I  have  often  known  young  men,  twenty  or  twenty- 
one  years  of  age,  to  master  within  three  months 
the  whole  of  the  elementary  requirement  in  Latin 
for  admission  to  Harvard  College  —  a  require- 
ment which  is  supposed  to  imply  a  systematic 
course  of  five  lessons  a  week,  extending  through 
at  least  the  three  years  between  fourteen  and 
seventeen  years  of  age.  Many  a  practising  law- 
yer in  the  prime  of  life  will  master  in  a  few  weeks 
the  principles  and  the  details  of  a  complex  sub- 
ject in  science  or  art,  in  transportation  or  manu- 
facturing, with  an  accuracy  and  comprehensive- 
ness which  enable  him  to  deal  successfully  with 
the  subject  in  competitive  argument.  Many  an 
adult  reader  with  trained  habits  of  attention  and 
concentration  will  absorb  the  contents  of  a  book 
with  a  speed  and  retentiveness  which  no  child 
can  approach.  The  important  things  to  accom- 
plish through  education  in  youth  are,  therefore, 
the  initiation  of  mental  processes  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  good  mental  habits,  with  incidental 
4 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

acquisition  of  information.  Continued  education 
during  adult  life  will  provide  increasing  stores  of 
information.  Education  for  efficiency,  individual 
or  national,  will  take  account  of  these  different, 
but  complementary  advantages  of  youth  and  of 
maturity. 

The  debate  over  the  proper  selection  of  studies 
in  youth  has  been  a  long  and  wearisome  one ; 
but  at  last  two  propositions  are  seen  to  command 
almost  universal  acceptance.  The  first  is  that  chil- 
dren and  young  people  should  study  the  elements 
of  a  considerable  variety  of  subjects,  such  as 
language,  mathematics,  history,  natural  science, 
sanitation,  and  economics,  not  with  the  primary 
purpose  of  obtaining  information  on  those  sub- 
jects, but  in  order  that  they  may  sample  several 
kinds  of  knowledge,  initiate  the  mental  processes 
and  habits  appropriate  to  each,  and  have  a  chance 
to  determine  wisely  in  what  direction  their  own 
individual  mental  powers  can  be  best  applied. 
The  second  is  that  training  for  power  of  work 
and  service  should  be  the  prime  object  of  educa- 
tion throughout  life,  no  matter  in  what  line  the 
trained  powers  of  the  individual  may  be  applied. 

5 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

This  measure  of  consenting  opinion  frees  me 
from  the  necessity  of  discussing  the  relative 
values  of  different  subjects  of  study,  and  the  dif- 
ferent meanings  of  the  word  cultivation,  and  en- 
ables me  to  ask  your  attention  at  once  to  the 
fundamental  matters  with  which  education  for 
efficiency  should  deal. 

I  take  up  first  the  training  of  the  bodily  senses 
and  the  care  of  the  body.  The  training  of  sight, 
hearing,  smell,  taste,  and  touch  has  been  neglected 
in  education  to  a  most  extraordinary  degree.  In- 
deed, schools  and  urban  conditions  of  life  have 
actually  impaired  on  a  great  scale  the  sense  of 
sight — that  best  window  of  the  soul.  Quickness 
and  accuracy  in  all  the  senses  are  of  high  value  to 
the  individual  throughout  life ;  and  in  innumerable 
cases  some  slight  but  unusual  superiority  in  one 
or  more  of  the  senses  becomes  the  real  basis  of 
success  in  life.  Thus,  the  father  and  son  who 
made  those  wonderful  glass  models  of  flowers  in 
the  Museum  of  Harvard  University  inherited 
from  generations  of  glass  blowers,  and  developed 
in  their  own  persons,  an  exquisite  skill  of  eye  and 
hand  which  gave  them  their  unique  success  in 
6 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

thatartistic  craftsmanship.  The  skill  of  most  good 
mechanics  depends  on  the  sure  cooperative  action 
of  a  practiced  eye  and  a  practiced  hand.  Most 
successful  surgeons  possess  as  the  basis  of  their 
success  an  unusual  accuracy  of  sight  and  touch 
combined  with  a  sure  memory  in  regional  ana- 
tomy and  a  presence  of  mind  which  no  emergency 
can  perturb.  The  locomotive  engineer,  or  the 
motorman  on  an  electric  car,  needs  a  short-time 
reaction  —  that  is,  the  interval  between  his  sight 
of  a  signal,  or  of  an  object  which  presents  itself 
suddenly,  and  the  corresponding  action  of  his 
hand  and  body  must  be  very  brief.  This  is  a 
bodily  quality  which  must  be  combined  with  a 
natural  steadiness  of  mind  and  an  indefatigable 
alertness.  The  training  of  the  ear  should  come 
through  reading  aloud,  reciting  prose  and  poetry, 
and  music.  Education  should  try  to  increase  sys- 
tematically pleasures  through  the  ear  to  compen- 
sate for  the  horrid  noises  of  urban  life.  The  sense 
of  smell  deserves  a  careful  training ;  for  it  is  the 
daily  source  of  keen  gratifications,  the  frequent 
renewer  of  mental  associations,  and  the  best 
natural  protector  against  corrupted  food,  drink, 

7 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

and  air.  As  a  rule  no  attention  is  paid  during 
systematic  education  to  this  invaluable  sense. 
While  the  body  is  under  training  and  after  it 
has  been  trained  it  requires  a  steady  and  intelli- 
gent care  which  education  for  efficiency  should 
systematically  teach.  Here  again  much  remains 
to  be  done  in  all  the  educational  systems  of  the 
civilized  world.  We  have  just  begun  to  provide 
medical  inspection  for  children  and  medical  visi- 
tation for  older  students,  and  to  teach  system- 
atically the  elements  of  personal  hygiene  and 
municipal  sanitation.  There  is  no  longer  any  ex- 
cuse for  neglect  of  these  subjects.  Twenty-five 
years  ago  the  medical  profession  did  not  know 
how  to  prevent  the  spread  of  typhoid  fever,  or 
malarial  fever,  or  how  to  combat  diphtheria  or  ap- 
pendicitis or  tuberculosis.  Now  medical  science 
knows  how  to  limit  these  evils  and  can  do  much 
to  prevent  their  destructiveness.  Within  the  same 
period  the  knowledge  of  civilized  mankind  con- 
cerning diets  and  the  regimen  of  health  has  in- 
creased prodigiously  ;  and  the  means  of  heating 
and  ventilating  houses,  factories,  and  meeting- 
places  have  been  wonderfully  improved.  To 
8 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

teach  all  these  things  to  the  whole  community 
should  be  an  important  part  of  education  for  effi- 
ciency ;  for  sickness  suspends  the  efficiency  of 
the  individual  and  premature  death  destroys  it, 
and  when  such  losses  are  multiplied  by  the  mil- 
lion, the  national  efficiency  is  gravely  impaired. 
If  education  can  succeed  in  prolonging  the  period 
of  individual  productiveness,  and  in  preventing 
the  breaks  in  that  productiveness  which  sickness 
causes,  it  will  thereby  increase  the  total  national 
productiveness  and  efficiency.  It  will  also  add 
greatly  to  the  public  happiness. 

Within  recent  years  we  have  had  abundant  evi- 
dence in  our  own  country  and  in  many  other 
countries  that  the  most  effective  labor  and  the 
cheapest  in  proportion  to  its  product  is  found 
where  the  laboring  classes  live  comfortably,  de- 
velop their  intelligence,  and  widen  their  pros- 
pects. It  is  not  the  cheapest  labor  that  is  the 
most  profitable,  but  the  best  fed  and  lodged,  the 
healthiest,  the  most  intelligent  and  the  most 
ambitious.  Since  some  of  the  fundamental  con- 
ditions of  well-being  in  the  laboring  classes  are 
physical   or    bodily,   so    knowledge    about   the 

9 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

training  and  care  of  the  body,  where  diffused 
through  the  whole  population,  ought  to  promote 
greatly  that  well-being.  I  have  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  watching  for  more  than  fifty  years  suc- 
cessive ranks  of  young  men  going  out  from 
Harvard  University  into  the  work  of  the  world, 
and  I  have  seen  in  hundreds  of  them  the  develop- 
ment of  character  and  the  issue  or  results  of  that 
development.  Anyone  who  has  used  such  an  op- 
portunity will  inevitably  be  an  optimist  concern- 
ing the  effects  and  potentialities  of  education. 
As  a  rule,  the  comparison  of  the  educated  man 
of  sixty  with  the  same  person  at  twenty  is  won- 
derfully encouraging  and  stimulating  with  regard 
to  the  average  effects  on  human  beings  of  edu- 
cation and  the  discipline  of  life ;  but  such  an 
optimist  will  confess,  if  he  is  candid,  that  the 
bodily  excellences  and  virtues  count  very  much 
toward  this  favorable  result.  It  seems  to  me,  as  I 
review  the  life-failures  I  have  witnessed,  that  the 
only  cases  of  hopeless  ruin  are  those  in  which 
the  body  has  first  been  ruined  through  neglect 
or  vice,  or  was  congenitally  perverted  and  made 
the  victim  of  criminal  propensities.  If,  through 
10 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

drink  or  licentiousness  or  other  vicious  habits, 
the  body  of  an  educated  man  is  ruined,  there  may 
be  no  recovery  possible  for  that  individual  in  this 
world ;  but  whenever  the  body  has  escaped  de- 
struction and  remains  in  tolerably  sound  condi- 
tion there  are  few  moral  wrecks  which  may  not 
be,  to  all  seeming,  completely  repaired  in  this 
world.  These  considerations  emphasize  strongly 
the  importance  of  making  the  means  of  protect- 
ing, caring  for,  and  improving  the  body  an  im- 
portant part  of  education  for  efficiency. 

The  next  thing  which  education  for  efficiency 
should  attend  to  is  the  imparting  of  the  habit  of 
quick  and  concentrated  attention.  Without  this 
habit  there  can  be  no  true  economy  of  time.  A 
prolonged  attention  is  not  natural  to  children, 
and  should  not  be  demanded  of  them  ;  but  quick 
and  concentrated  attention  may  be  reasonably 
expected  for  brief  intervals  from  every  child,  and 
as  the  age  increases  the  possible  period  of  close 
attention  will  grow  longer  and  longer.  The  differ- 
ence between  adults  in  mental  efficiency  is  chiefly 
a  difference  in  this  very  power  of  concentrated 
attention.  The  man  who  has  this  power  will  grasp 
II 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

quickly  new  subjects  presented  to  him,  gratify 
people  who  have  business  with  him  by  giving 
them  prompt  and  effective  attention,  seize  eagerly 
upon  the  contents  of  books  or  papers  which  re- 
late to  the  affair  in  hand,  and  despatch  his  daily 
work,  whatever  its  nature  —  mechanical,  com- 
mercial, scholarly,  or  administrative.  He  will  do 
in  one  minute  the  work  for  which  an  inferior  man 
will  need  five  minutes  or  five  hours.  He  will  effect 
in  every  day  of  his  life  a  great  economy  of  time. 
There  will  be  no  dawdling  or  vague  dreaming  in 
the  action  of  his  mind.  His  thoughts  will  not  be 
a  rope  of  sand,  but  a  chain  of  welded  links.  The 
great  thinkers  and  doers,  philosophers  and  inven- 
tors, soldiers  and  rulers  are  alike  in  possessing 
in  the  highest  degree  this  power  of  concentrated 
attention;  and  in  common  men  and  women  this 
is  the  most  valuable  of  all  mental  faculties.  To 
rouse,  awake,  inculcate,  and  train  this  power  in 
the  child  and  the  youth  should  be  a  principal  ob- 
ject in  education  for  efficiency.  We  say  of  the 
child  in  whom  this  power  does  not  seem  to  exist 
that  he  cannot  apply  himself,  that  he  cannot  be 
made  to  study,  or  that  he  does  not  set  his  mind 

12 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

at  work.  For  every  such  child  the  main  problem 
is  to  discover  the  means  of  interesting  him  in  a 
mental  occupation  enough  to  induce  him  to  con- 
centrate his  attention.  Skill  in  discovering  the 
means  of  interesting  the  childish  mind  enough 
to  compel  attention  is  characteristic  of  the  good 
teacher.  If  oral  instruction  does  not  gain  a  close 
attention,  perhaps  books  will;  if  books  fail,  car- 
penter's tools,  cook's  tools,  a  lathe,  an  embroidery 
frame,  or  a  forge  may  succeed ;  if  mechanical 
work  does  not  rouse  the  mental  forces,  perhaps 
drawing  or  modelling  will ;  if  all  other  means  fail, 
the  training  of  the  power  of  attention  may  be 
begun  through  music.  The  modern  biographies 
which  give  us  an  insight  into  the  working  of  the 
minds  of  their  subjects,  such  as  the  biographies 
of  Huxley,  Darwin,  Pasteur,  Tennyson,  Cavour, 
Lincoln,  and  Gladstone,  show  us  the  power  of 
concentrated  attention  as  the  fundamental  source 
of  the  prodigious  productiveness  of  great  workers. 
It  may  seem  strange  to  say  so,  but  it  is  per- 
fectly plain  to  persons  who  have  been  carefully 
observing  the  rising  generations  that  education 
for  efficiency  must  especially  endeavor  to  induce 
13 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

young  people  to  think.  The  incessant  hurry  and 
trivial  activity  of  daily  life  which  now  characterize 
childhood  and  youth,  as  well  as  maturity,  seem 
to  prevent,  or  at  least  discourage,  quiet  and  in- 
tense thinking,  and  particularly  that  inventive 
thinking,  which  is  something  more  than  sorting 
or  putting  in  order  materials  supplied  to  the  mind 
from  without.  The  public  press  no  longer  in- 
vites its  readers  to  sustained  thought.  Instead  of 
a  book,  it  gives  them  a  six-page  magazine  article ; 
instead  of  a  half-column  editorial,  a  three-line 
"brevity,"  which  is  often  cast  in  a  comical  form. 
The  average  reader  of  the  newspaper  or  the  short 
story  reads  to  forget,  not  to  remember.  He  rarely 
has  any  intention  of  digesting  and  assimilating 
what  he  reads.  For  the  most  part,  he  rejects 
what  he  reads  without  even  swallowing  it  In 
former  times  reading  seems  to  have  involved 
some  deliberate  thinking  on  the  part  of  the  reader. 
It  no  longer  does.  Much  of  our  daily  reading  is 
correctly  described  as  mental  dissipation.  In 
school  and  college,  the  amplest  use  is  made  of 
helps  to  learning.  Manuals  and  treatises  facili- 
tate to  the  utmost  the  acquisition  of  the  pre- 
14 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

scribed  quantities  of  knowledge ;  and  tutors  and 
professors  offer  additional  aids,  and  almost  suc- 
ceed in  doing  for  their  pupils  the  necessary  mini- 
mum of  thinking  and  willing.  Now  the  efficient 
man  is  the  man  who  thinks  for  himself,  and  is 
capable  of  thinking  hard  and  long.  This  is  a  pro- 
cess which  requires  motive  and  will-power.  Out 
in  the  world  the  motives  are  often  pleasure  in 
the  exercise  of  power,  or  satisfaction  in  the  get- 
ting of  money  or  what  money  can  buy ;  but  obvi- 
ously these  motives  are  not  immediately  appli- 
cable during  the  period  of  education.  The  problem 
education  for  efficiency  has  to  solve  is  how  to 
stimulate  young  people  to  think  in  the  absence 
of  these  pressing  motives  of  the  real  world. 
Since  consecutive  thinking  absolutely  requires 
personal  initiative,  or  a  compulsion  from  within 
and  not  from  without,  there  must  be  a  motive  for 
this  compelling  action  of  the  will.  One  available 
motive  is  supplied  by  experience  of  the  enjoy- 
ment or  satisfaction  which  good  thinking  yields 
to  the  thinker ;  but  this  motive  can  be  roused  to 
activity  in  the  study  of  those  subjects  only  which 
have  a  natural  interest  for  the  young  thinker. 
IS 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Hence  the  importance  of  discovering  early  those 
subjects  for  each  individual.  Another  motive  is 
the  conviction  that  winning  the  best  satisfactions 
of  later  life  will  depend  on  possessing  this  power 
to  think.  It  is  this  conviction  which  converts  a 
listless  undergraduate  into  a  diligent  student  of 
law  or  medicine.  The  teacher,  the  parent,  or  the 
friend  can  often  do  much  to  implant  this  convic- 
tion and  to  guide  the  pupil  into  an  enjoyment  of 
thinking ;  but  that  is  about  all  the  teacher  or 
older  friend  can  do.  The  school  and  college  can- 
not use  the  method  of  Nature,  —  root,  hog,  or  die, 
—  and  the  more  elaborate  the  schools  and  colleges 
become,  and  the  more  ingenious  their  methods 
of  teaching  and  of  helping,  the  less  can  they  use 
the  compulsions  which  depend  on  fear  of  pain, 
poverty,  obscurity,  and  dependence.  The  unthink- 
ing mind  is  not  necessarily  dull,  rude,  or  imper- 
vious ;  it  is  probably  simply  empty,  or  occupied 
from  moment  to  moment  with  unconnected  trivi- 
alities. On  the  other  hand,  the  thinking  mind  is 
as  far  as  possible  from  the  lazy  mind.  It  may 
be  meditative,  reflective,  or  rudimentary ;  it  will 
probably  be  abstracted  or  withdrawn  from  the 
i6 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

external  incidents  of  the  moment,  but  it  must  be 
hard  at  work.  To  inspire  the  motive  for  this  hard 
work  at  an  early  age,  and  to  train  the  power  of 
consecutive  thinking,  is  the  gravest  problem  in 
education  for  efficiency.  The  influence  which  de- 
velops the  necessary  motive  in  the  thinking  child 
or  youth  is,  in  most  cases,  a  personal  influence, 
which  is  partly  stimulus,  but  more  example. 
This  influence  should  rather  lead  than  drive  ;  for 
the  personal  initiative  in  thinking  is  indispen- 
sable. The  fortunate  child  is  the  one  who  gets 
at  home  this  inspiration  and  guidance  toward 
thinking.  The  power  comes  almost  unconsciously 
to  the  child  that  grows  up  in  a  thoughtful  home ; 
but  such  homes  are  rare  indeed.  If  the  home  can- 
not yield  this  influence,  the  next  thing  to  hope 
for  is  that  the  child  may  come  under  the  influ- 
ence of  a  teacher  who  thinks  and  inspires  think- 
ing. The  well-to-do  parent  who  has  an  unthinking 
child  may  be  wisely  advised  to  search  diligently 
from  school  to  school  for  the  teacher  that  can 
have  that  effect  on  his  child.  In  the  technical 
school  or  the  college  the  student  will  probably 
get  the  chance  of  coming  under  the  influence  of 
17 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

an  enthusiastic  specialist  in  the  subject  which  the 
student  affects;  and  this  specialist  may  be  a 
thinking  man  who  leads  his  pupils  to  think.  It 
has  been  imagined  that  science  and  laboratory 
work  must  be  peculiarly  thought-compelling; 
but  this  may  not  be  at  all  true  in  the  elementary 
stages  of  education.  There  are  mechanical  ways 
of  cramming  scientific  facts  and  doing  laboratory 
work;  just  as  there  are  pigeon-hole  methods  of 
accumulating  and  sorting  materials  and  "  sources  " 
in  philological  and  historical  work.  The  manual, 
the  syllabus,  and  the  coach  are  now  as  well  de- 
veloped for  scientific  subjects  as  for  literary.  In 
teaching  the  young  to  think  hard,  any  subject 
will  answer.  The  problem  is  to  get  them  to  weigh 
evidence,  draw  accurate  inferences,  make  fair 
comparisons,  invent  solutions,  and  form  judg- 
ments; and  this  is  the  serious  problem  in  all 
education  for  efficiency. 

Another  leading  object  in  education  for  effi- 
ciency is  the  cultivation  of  the  critical  discern- 
ment of  beauty  and  excellence  in  things  and  in 
words  and  thoughts,  in  nature  and  in  human 
nature.  We  associate  the  word  *'  criticism  "  with 
i8 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

the  discernment  of  defects  and  inferiorities,  and 
the  mind  we  ordinarily  call  critical  is  apt  to  have 
a  keener  scent  for  faults,  mistakes,  and  offences 
than  for  merits,  wise  judgments,  and  right  ac- 
tions ;  but  the  faculty  for  discerning  quickly  and 
surely  excellences  and  virtues  in  persons,  peoples, 
nature,  and  art  is  an  immeasurably  more  valuable 
and  useful  faculty  than  the  faculty  for  seeing 
weaknesses  and  sins.  It  ought  to  be  carefully 
and  incessantly  cultivated  by  school,  college,  and 
the  experience  of  life,  for  it  is  capable  of  con- 
tributing greatly  to  happiness  as  well  as  to  ma- 
terial success.  The  faculty  of  discerning  and 
using  conspicuous  merit  in  other  people  distin- 
guishes the  most  successful  administrators,  rulers, 
and  men  of  business.  It  is  the  habit  of  picking 
out  beauties  and  excellences  in  mixed  characters 
and  mixed  scenes,  or  in  events  containing  both 
good  and  evil,  which  provides  a  firm  foundation 
for  satisfaction  and  content  in  daily  life.  This 
critical  faculty  for  beauty  and  virtue  in  things 
and  people  can  be  cultivated  to  a  high  degree 
from  early  childhood  throughout  life,  or  it  can  be 
repressed  and  overborne  by  the  opposite  habit, 
19 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

which  ordinary  conversation  and  the  daily  press 
tend  to  foster,  of  attending  to  abnormal  evils, 
crimes,  and  disasters,  rather  than  to  the  normal 
fortunate  course  of  events.  Towards  this  habit- 
ual cultivation,  what  is  called  "nature  study"  is 
of  great  use,  because  nature  is  full  of  abounding 
beauties  and  excellences  and  of  perfect  adapta- 
tions of  means  to  ends.  To  be  sure,  it  is  full  too 
of  ugliness,  imperfections,  and  defects,  but  the 
order  and  stability  of  the  natural  world  as  it  ap- 
pears to  human  senses,  and  the  proved  fitness  of 
the  world  to  develop  in  man  his  noblest  faculties, 
testify  to  the  immense  preponderance  of  good 
over  evil  in  the  universe  as  it  appears  to  man. 
Is  it  not  strange  that  the  introduction  of  the 
study  of  nature  into  schools  and  colleges  should 
have  been  reserved  for  the  nineteenth  century.? 
Is  it  not  stranger  still  that  the  garden  as  a  means 
of  teaching  children  should  never  have  been  used 
in  public  school  systems  till  within  the  last  few 
years.?  The  blackboard  is  an  old  invention  like 
the  sand  table,  but  how  does  it  compare  with  a 
garden  plot  as  a  means  of  teaching  the  critical 
discernment  of  beauty  and  excellence  ?  It  is  char- 
20 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

acteristic  of  the  advance  of  mankind  toward  civ- 
ilization that  men  become  more  and  more  sensible 
of  the  good  in  the  world  and  less  and  less  appre- 
hensive of  the  evil.  In  civilized  society  every  child 
ought  to  be  drilled  in  the  critical  discernment  and 
appreciation  of  excellence  and  beauty,  physical, 
mental,  and  moral.  Should  we  not  all  be  vastly 
more  charitable  in  our  judgments  of  people  if  we 
were  in  the  habit  of  looking  for  the  excellences 
in  people's  bodies,  minds,  and  hearts,  rather  than 
for  the  defects  .-*  No  man  and  no  woman  possesses 
perfect  beauty,  but  most  people  possess  some 
beauties ;  no  man  and  no  woman  possesses  a  per- 
fect character,  but  most  men  and  women  possess 
solid  virtues,  however  their  virtues  may  be  mixed 
with  vices.  Let  us  teachers  take  thought  for 
teaching  on  a  great  scale  the  habitual  discern- 
ment of  superiorities  rather  than  of  inferiorities. 
Another  faculty  which  all  schools  and  colleges, 
all  churches  and  all  social  institutions,  and  the 
experience  of  adult  life  should  cultivate  inces- 
santly is  the  judicial  faculty  for  the  wise  enjoy- 
ment of  liberty.  For  savage  or  semi-civilized  men, 
and  for  some  children  who  pass  through  barbaric 

21 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

stages  of  development,  authority  is  needed  to  re- 
strain them  from  injuring  themselves  or  others; 
but  the  diminishing  part  played  by  authority  in 
the  family  and  the  commonwealth,  and  the  in- 
creasing room  and  need  for  individual  liberty  are 
characteristic  of  what  we  call  modem  civilization. 
The  reason  is  that  the  will  power  of  the  individ- 
ual is  the  taproot  of  all  his  growth  in  character 
and  efficiency.  Authority  curbs  the  will  power  of 
the  individual;  liberty  gives  it  play  and  exercises 
it.  Therefore  the  training  of  the  will  to  the  wise 
use  of  liberty  is  the  great  means  of  developing 
individual  strength  of  character  and  national 
greatness.  The  child  or  youth  of  weak  will  is  the 
one  that  his  teachers  will  find  most  difficult  to 
train  or  to  inspire.  The  nation  which  is  impulsive, 
flighty,  fickle,  and  hysterical  will  go  down  before 
the  steady,  considerate,  phlegmatic,  and  resolute 
nation.  Whatever  else  a  school  or  a  university 
may  do  for  its  pupils,  if  it  does  not  implant  the 
love  of  liberty  and  cultivate  the  lawful  and  pro- 
ductive use  of  liberty,  that  school  or  university 
will  have  failed  to  render  its  highest  service  to 
the  youth  under  its  charge.  As  a  rule,  universi- 

22 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

ties  have  been  schools  of  liberty,  but  there  have 
been  grave  exceptions,  like  that  of  Oxford  in 
Gladstone's  time.  The  wise  use  of  liberty,  whether 
by  an  individual  or  a  nation,  can  only  be  learnt 
by  practice,  and  through  the  passing  down  from 
generation  to  generation  of  a  gradually  accumu- 
lated stock  of  public  liberty ;  and  since  the  gov- 
ernments of  the  civilized  world  are  evidently  to 
be  based  on  a  broad  suffrage,  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  the  peaceful  progress  of  mankind 
that  the  love  of  liberty  should  be  inculcated  and 
the  practice  of  individual  liberty  should  be  sys- 
tematically taught  in  the  family  and  in  all  insti- 
tutions of  education.  It  becomes  teachers,  espe- 
cially, to  bear  always  in  mind,  and  to  observe  in 
dealing  with  children,  the  principle  that  it  is  lib- 
erty alone  which  fits  men  for  liberty,  as  Gladstone 
wrote  in  1882  about  local  government  for  Ireland. 
The  nineteenth  century  brought  into  the  world 
for  the  service  of  education,  as  well  as  for  the 
service  of  industries  and  government,  the  new 
temper  of  mind  called  the  scientific;  and  the  ef- 
fects of  this  new  temper  or  spirit  have  been  no- 
thing less  than  revolutionary.  What  is  the  real 
23 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

essence  of  this  new  temper  or  spirit,  so  far  as  it 
affects,  or  should  affect,  education?  Is  not  its 
real  essence  the  passion  for  truth,  or  for  the  fact, 
as  distinguished  from  the  guess,  or  the  imagina- 
tion ?  Is  it  not  the  preference  for  sound  premises 
over  logical  trains  of  reasoning  on  doubtful  pre- 
mises? Is  it  not  the  conviction  that  action  should 
be  based  not  on  shadowy  inference  or  ingenious 
speculation,  but  on  solid  fact  ?  The  implanting  of 
the  love  of  truth  as  the  opposite  of  error  and  of 
falsehood  is  surely  one  of  the  greatest  contribu- 
tions that  education  can  make  to  individual  effi- 
ciency ;  for  the  human  powers,  if  they  are  to  be 
efficiently  used,  must  be  exerted  in  accordance 
with  the  natural  and  moral  law,  or,  in  other  words, 
in  accordance  with  the  facts  of  the  world.  This 
principle  holds  true  in  the  least  events  and  acts 
of  the  individual's  life,  as  well  as  in  the  play  of 
broad,  national  forces.  If  one  wants  to  dam  a  little 
brook  on  his  own  farm,  he  must  know  whether 
he  can  get  a  water-tight  foundation  for  his  dam. 
If  the  United  States  means  to  maintain  success- 
fully a  canal  across  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  the 
designers  of  the  canal  must  know  the  extreme 
24 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

rainfall  of  the  watershed  of  the  Isthmus,  and  the 
habits  of  the  river  Chagres.  Such  an  enterprise, 
small  or  large,  can  succeed  only  on  firm  founda- 
tions of  truth  or  fact.  If  the  primary  school 
teacher  longs  to  stir  the  sluggish  mind  of  one  of 
her  scholars,  she  must  first  find  out  what  the 
sluggishness  is  due  to  —  to  poor  food,  to  bad  air, 
to  adenoid  growths,  to  astigmatic  or  near-sighted 
eyes,  to  dull  hearing,  or  to  fear,  or  shyness,  or  a 
broken  will.  She  must  find  out  the  facts  of  the 
case  before  she  can  deal  with  it.  She  must  learn 
the  truth  about  that  child  before  she  can  set  it 
free.  In  order  to  cultivate  the  love  of  truth,  it  is 
of  the  utmost  consequence  that  children  should 
study  things  as  well  as  words,  external  nature  as 
well  as  books,  living  persons  as  well  as  pictures 
and  descriptions  of  persons,  events  which  take 
place  before  their  eyes  as  well  as  stories  of  long 
past  events.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  value 
of  productive  labor  to  the  child  or  youth,  provided 
always  that  the  labor  be  proportionate  to  the 
pupil's  strength  and  yield  him  some  return  which 
he  values.  Productive  labor  deals  with  facts,  and 
is  productive  only  so  far  as  it  conforms  to  the 

25 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

truth  of  things.  The  search  for  truth  is  the  new 
passion  and  religion  of  to-day.  It  has  been  the 
most  effective  altruism  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  rouses  the  enthusiastic  devotion  of  many  fine 
natures,  inspires  self-denial,  patience,  and  cour- 
age, and  makes  men  and  women  content  to  un- 
dergo hardships  and  to  brave  perils.  With  the 
love  of  truth  often  goes  the  love  of  freedom,  and 
these  two  loves  together  are  capable  of  inspiring 
and  directing  the  most  efficient  human  lives.  That 
is  a  wonderful  prophecy  in  John  viii,  32:  "Ye 
shall  know  the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free."  It  follows  from  this  doctrine  that  the 
most  important  quality  in  a  teacher,  whether  for 
children  or  for  adults,  is  genuine  and  transparent 
truthfulness.  No  other  qualities,  however  brilliant, 
can  compensate  for  the  absence  of  this  quality  in 
a  teacher.  In  the  same  way  and  for  the  same  rea- 
son, no  quality  is  so  valuable  as  truthfulness  in 
the  leaders  of  a  free  people,  simply  because  truth- 
telling  and  truth-doing  lie  at  the  foundation  of 
national  efficiency.  In  a  modern  world  a  nation 
is  effective  in  proportion  to  its  truthfulness, 
or,  in  other  words,  in  proportion  as  it  keeps  its 
26 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

thinking,  speaking,  and  acting  in  accord  with 
facts. 

Finally,  education  for  efficiency  should  supply 
every  pupil  with  the  motive  power  of  some  en- 
thusiasm or  devotion.  The  real  motive  power 
in  every  human  life,  and  in  all  national  life,  is 
sentiment ;  and  the  highest  efficiency  cannot  be 
produced  in  any  human  being  unless  his  whole 
character  and  his  whole  activity  be  dominated  by 
some  sentiment  or  passion.  An  evil  passion  may 
give  great  physical  and  intellectual  powers  a  ter- 
rible efficiency.  A  good  passion  can  make  or- 
dinary talents  extraordinarily  effective.  A  life 
without  a  prevailing  enthusiasm  is  sure  not  to  rise 
to  its  highest  level.  These  private  enthusiasms 
or  devotions  are  fortunately  almost  as  various  as 
are  the  characters  of  men.  There  are  also  bene- 
ficent enthusiasms  which  pervade,  simultane- 
ously, multitudes  of  human  beings  and  give  them 
a  common  effectiveness.  At  this  moment  a  gre- 
garious enthusiasm  for  social  service  inspires  a 
considerable  proportion  of  educated  American 
youth.  Anyone  who  has  read  many  biographies 
will  have  perceived  that  the  guiding  enthusiasm 
27 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

of  a  life  often  springs  early  into  view,  and  that 
this  is  almost  always  the  case  in  the  most  effec- 
tive human  beings.  The  youth  has  a  vision  of 
the  life  he  would  like  to  live,  of  the  service  he 
would  choose  to  render,  of  the  power  he  would 
prefer  to  exercise ;  and  for  fifty  years  he  pur- 
sues this  vision.  In  almost  all  great  men  the 
leading  idea  of  the  life  is  caught  early,  or  a  prin- 
ciple or  thesis  comes  to  mind  during  youth  which 
the  entire  adult  life  is  too  short  to  develop  thor- 
oughly. Most  great  teachers  have  started  with  a 
theory,  or  a  single  idea  or  group  of  ideas,  to  the 
working  out  of  which  in  practice  they  have  given 
their  lives.  Many  great  preachers  have  really  had 
but  one  theme.  Many  architects  have  devoted 
themselves,  with  inexhaustible  enthusiasm,  to  a 
single  style  in  architecture.  Some  of  the  greatest 
soldiers  have  fought  all  their  battles  by  one  sort 
of  strategy  adopted  in  their  youth.  Many  great 
rulers  have  harped  all  their  lives  on  only  one 
string  of  national  or  racial  sentiment.  Among 
men  of  science  the  instances  are  innumerable  in 
which  a  whole  life  has  been  devoted  to  the  pa- 
tient pursuit  of  a  single  vision  seen  in  youth.  For 
28 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

common  men  and  women  two  or  three  of  the 
common  loves  will  suffice  —  the  love  of  family 
and  home,  of  school  and  church,  of  mountain 
and  sea,  of  nature  and  books,  of  private  and  pub- 
lic liberty,  of  truth  and  justice.  For  us  teach- 
ers it  is  indeed  an  inspiring  fact  that  effective 
and  enduring  enthusiasms  spring  up  spontane- 
ously, or  may  be  implanted  in  early  life ;  for 
without  them  education  cannot  procure  the  high- 
est efficiency,  either  during  youth,  or  for  the 
after-life.  Education  for  efficiency  must  not  be 
materialistic,  prosaic,  or  utilitarian ;  it  must  be 
idealistic,  humane,  and  passionate,  or  it  will  not 
win  its  goal. 


THE  NEW  DEFINITION  OF 
THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 


II 

THE  NEW  DEFINITION  OF 
THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

To  produce  the  cultivated  man,  or  at  least  the 
man  capable  of  becoming  cultivated  in  after-life, 
has  long  been  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  funda- 
mental objects  of  systematic  and  thorough  edu- 
cation. The  ideal  of  general  cultivation  has  been 
one  of  the  standards  in  education.  It  is  often 
asked :  Will  the  education  which  a  given  insti- 
tution is  supplying  produce  the  cultivated  man  ? 
Or,  Can  cultivation  be  the  result  of  a  given  course 
of  study  ?  In  such  questions  there  is  an  implica- 
tion that  the  education  which  does  not  produce 
the  cultivated  man  is  a  failure,  or  has  been  mis- 
conceived, or  misdirected.  Now,  if  cultivation 
were  an  unchanging  ideal,  the  steady  use  of  the 
conception  as  a  permanent  test  of  educational 
processes  might  be  justified;  but  if  the  culti- 
vated man  of  to-day  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  distinctly 
different  creature  from  the  cultivated  man  of  a 
33 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

century  ago,  the  ideal  of  cultivation  cannot  be 
appealed  to  as  a  standard  without  preliminary  ex- 
planations and  interpretations.  It  is  the  object  of 
this  paper  to  show  that  the  idea  of  cultivation  in 
the  highly  trained  human  being  has  undergone 
substantial  changes  during  the  last  century. 

I  ought  to  say  at  once  that  I  propose  to  use 
the  term  "  cultivated  man  "  in  only  its  good  sense 
—  in  Emerson's  sense.  In  this  paper,  he  is  not 
to  be  a  weak,  critical,  fastidious  creature,  vain  of 
a  little  exclusive  information  or  of  an  uncommon 
knack  in  Latin  verse  or  mathematical  logic ;  he 
is  to  be  a  man  of  quick  perceptions,  broad  sym- 
pathies, and  wide  affinities  ;  responsive,  but  inde- 
pendent ;  self-reliant,  but  deferential ;  loving  truth 
and  candor,  but  also  moderation  and  proportion  ; 
courageous,  but  gentle ;  not  finished,  but  perfect- 
ing. All  authorities  agree  that  true  culture  is  not 
exclusive,  sectarian,  or  partisan,  but  the  very  op- 
posite ;  that  it  is  not  to  be  attained  in  solitude, 
but  in  society ;  and  that  the  best  atmosphere  for 
culture  is  that  of  a  school,  university,  academy, 
or  church,  where  many  pursue  together  the  ideals 
of  truth,  righteousness,  and  love. 
34 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

Here  someone  may  think:  This  process  of 
cultivation  is  evidently  a  long,  slow,  artificial 
process ;  I  prefer  the  genius,  the  man  of  native 
power  or  skill,  the  man  whose  judgment  is  sound 
and  influence  strong,  though  he  cannot  read  or 
write  —  the  born  inventor,  orator,  or  poet.  So  do 
we  all.  Men  have  always  reverenced  prodigious 
inborn  gifts,  and  always  will  Indeed,  barbarous 
men  always  say  of  the  possessors  of  such  gifts  : 
These  are  not  men,  they  are  gods.  But  we  teach- 
ers who  carry  on  a  system  of  popular  education, 
which  is  by  far  the  most  complex  and  valuable 
invention  of  this  century,  know  that  we  have  to 
do,  not  with  the  highly  gifted  units,  but  with  the 
millions  who  are  more  or  less  capable  of  being 
cultivated  by  the  long,  patient,  artificial  training 
called  education.  For  us  and  our  system,  the 
genius  is  no  standard,  but  the  cultivated  man  is. 
To  his  stature  we  and  many  of  our  pupils  may  in 
time  attain. 

There  are  two  principal  differences  between 
the  present  ideal  of  cultivation  and  that  which 
prevailed  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. All  thinkers  agree  that  the  horizon  of  the 
35 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

human  intellect  has  widened  wonderfully  during 
the  past  hundred  years,  and  that  the  scientific 
method  of  inquiry,  which  was  known  to  but  very 
few  when  the  nineteenth  century  began,  has  been 
the  means  of  that  widening.  This  method  has  be- 
come indispensable  in  all  fields  of  inquiry,  in- 
cluding psychology,  philanthropy,  and  religion ; 
and  therefore  intimate  acquaintance  with  it  has 
become  an  indispensable  element  in  culture.  As 
Matthew  Arnold  pointed  out  more  than  a  gen- 
eration ago,  educated  mankind  is  governed  by 
two  passions — one  the  passion  for  pure  know- 
ledge, the  other  the  passion  for  being  of  service 
or  doing  good.  Now,  the  passion  for  pure  know- 
ledge is  to  be  gratified  only  through  the  scientific 
method  of  inquiry.  In  Arnold's  phrases  the  first 
step  for  every  aspirant  to  culture  is  to  endeavor 
to  see  things  as  they  are,  or  "  to  learn,  in  short, 
the  will  of  God."  The  second  step  is  to  make 
that  will  prevail,  each  in  his  own  sphere  of  action 
and  influence.  This  recognition  of  science  as  pure 
knowledge,  and  of  the  scientific  method  as  the 
universal  method  of  inquiry,  is  the  great  addition 
made  by  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  idea  of 
36 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

culture.  I  need  not  say  that  within  that  century 
what  we  call  science,  pure  and  applied,  has  trans- 
formed the  world  as  the  scene  of  the  human 
drama;  and  that  it  is  this  transformation  which 
has  compelled  the  recognition  of  natural  science 
as  a  fundamental  necessity  in  liberal  education. 
The  most  convinced  exponents  and  advocates  of 
humanism  now  recognize  that  science  is  the 
"paramount  force  of  the  modern,  as  distinguished 
from  the  antique  and  the  mediaeval  spirit,"  ^  and 
that  "an  interpenetration  of  humanism  with 
science,  and  of  science  with  humanism,  is  the 
condition  of  the  highest  culture." 

A  second  modification  of  the  earlier  idea  of 
cultivation  was  advocated  by  Ralph  Waldo  Em- 
erson more  than  two  generations  ago.  He  taught 
that  the  acquisition  of  some  form  of  manual  skill 
and  the  practice  of  some  form  of  manual  labor 
were  essential  elements  of  culture.  This  idea  has 
more  and  more  become  accepted  in  the  system- 
atic education  of  youth  ;  and  if  we  include  ath- 
letic sports  among  the  desirable  forms  of  manual 
skill  and  labor,  we  may  say  that  during  the  last 

ijohn  Addington  Symonds,  Culture. 

37 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

thirty  years  this  element  of  excellence  of  body  in 
the  ideal  of  education  has  had  a  rapid,  even  an 
exaggerated,  development.  The  idea  of  some 
sort  of  bodily  excellence  was,  to  be  sure,  not  ab- 
sent in  the  old  conception  of  the  cultivated  man. 
The  gentleman  could  ride  well,  dance  gracefully, 
and  fence  with  skill.  But  the  modern  conception 
of  bodily  skill  as  an  element  in  cultivation  is 
more  comprehensive,  and  includes  that  habitual 
contact  with  the  external  world  which  Emerson 
deemed  essential  to  real  culture.  We  have  lately 
become  convinced  that  accurate  work  with  car- 
penters' tools,  or  lathe,  or  hammer  and  anvil,  or 
violin,  or  piano,  or  pencil,  or  crayon,  or  camel's- 
hair  brush,  trains  well  the  same  nerves  and  gan- 
glia with  which  we  do  what  is  ordinarily  called 
thinking.  We  have  also  become  convinced  that 
some  intimate,  sympathetic  acquaintance  with 
the  natural  objects  of  the  earth  and  sky  adds 
greatly  to  the  happiness  of  life,  and  that  this  ac- 
quaintance should  be  begun  in  childhood  and  be 
developed  all  through  adolescence  and  maturity. 
A  brook,  a  hedgerow,  or  a  garden  is  an  inex- 
haustible teacher  of  wonder,  reverence,  and  love. 
38 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

The  scientists  insist  to-day  on  nature  study  for 
children ;  but  we  teachers  ought  long  ago  to  have 
learned  from  the  poets  the  value  of  this  element 
in  education.  They  are  the  best  advocates  of  na- 
ture study.  If  any  are  not  convinced  of  its  worth, 
then  let  them  go  to  Theocritus,  Virgil,  Words- 
worth, Tennyson,  or  Lowell  for  the  needed  de- 
monstration. Let  them  observe,  too,  that  a  great 
need  of  modern  industrial  society  is  intellectual 
pleasures,  or  pleasure  which,  like  music,  combines 
delightful  sensations  with  the  gratifications  of 
observation,  association,  memory,  and  sympathy. 
The  idea  of  culture  has  always  included  a  quick 
and  wide  sympathy  with  men ;  it  should  here- 
after include  sympathy  with  nature,  and  particu- 
larly with  its  living  forms,  a  sympathy  based  on 
some  accurate  observation  of  nature.  The  book- 
worm, the  monk,  the  isolated  student,  has  never 
been  the  type  of  the  cultivated  man.  Society  has 
seemed  the  natural  setting  for  the  cultivated  per- 
son, man  or  woman ;  but  the  present  conception 
of  real  culture  contains  not  only  a  large  develop- 
ment of  this  social  element,  but  also  an  exten- 
sion of  interest  and  reverence  to  the  animated 
39 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

creation  and  to  those  immense  forces  that  set 
the  earthly  stage  for  man  and  all  related  beings. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  examine  some  of  the 
changes  in  the  idea  of  culture,  or  in  the  available 
means  of  culture,  which  the  last  hundred  years 
have  brought  about. 

L  The  moral  sense  of  the  modern  world  makes 
character  a  more  important  element  than  it  used 
to  be  in  the  ideal  of  a  cultivated  man.  Now,  char- 
acter is  formed,  as  Goethe  said,  in  the  "  stream 
of  the  world  " — not  in  stillness  or  isolation,  but 
in  the  quick-flowing  tides  of  the  busy  world,  the 
world  of  nature  and  the  world  of  mankind.  At 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  world  was 
wonderfully  different  from  the  world  at  the  begin- 
ning of  that  eventful  period ;  and,  moreover,  men's 
means  of  making  acquaintance  with  the  world 
were  vastly  ampler  than  they  were  a  hundred  years 
earlier.  To  the  old  idea  of  culture  some  know- 
ledge of  history  was  indispensable.  Now,  history 
is  a  representation  of  the  stream  of  the  world,  or 
of  some  little  portion  of  that  streain,  one  hundred, 
five  hundred,  two  thousand  years  ago.  Acquaint- 
ance with  some  part  of  the  present  stream  ought 
40 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

to  be  more  formative  of  character,  and  more  in- 
structive as  regards  external  nature  and  the  na- 
ture of  man,  than  any  partial  survey  of  the  stream 
that  was  flowing  centuries  ago.  We  have,  then, 
through  the  present  means  of  reporting  the 
stream  of  the  world  from  day  to  day,  material  for 
culture  such  as  no  preceding  generation  of  men 
has  possessed.  The  cultivated  man  or  woman 
must  use  the  means  which  steam  and  electricity 
have  provided  for  reporting  the  play  of  physical 
forces  and  of  human  volitions  which  make  the 
world  of  to-day;  for  the  world  of  to-day  supplies 
in  its  immense  variety  a  picture  of  all  stages  of 
human  progress,  from  the  stone  age,  through 
savagery,  barbarism,  and  mediaevalism,  to  what 
we  now  call  civilization.  The  rising  generation 
should  think  hard,  and  feel  keenly,  just  where  the 
men  and  women  who  constitute  the  actual  human 
world  are  thinking  and  feeling  most  to-day.  The 
panorama  of  to-day's  events  is  not  an  accurate  or 
complete  picture,  for  history  will  supply  posterity 
with  much  evidence  which  is  hidden  from  the 
eyes  of  contemporaries ;  but  it  is  nevertheless  an 
invaluable  and  a  new  means  of  developing  good 
41 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

judgment,  good  feeling,  and  the  passion  for  social 
service ;  or,  in  other  words,  of  securing  cultiva- 
tion. But  someone  will  say :  The  stream  of  the 
world  is  foul.  True  in  part.  The  stream  is,  what 
it  has  been,  a  mixture  of  foulness  and  purity,  of 
meanness  and  majesty;  but  it  has  nourished  indi- 
vidual virtue  and  race  civilization.  Literature  and 
history  are  a  similar  mixture,  and  yet  are  the  tra- 
ditional means  of  culture.  Are  not  the  Greek 
tragedies  means  of  culture }  Yet  they  are  full  of 
incest,  murder,  and  human  sacrifices  to  lustful 
and  revengeful  gods. 

II.  A  cultivated  man  should  express  himself  by 
tongue  or  pen  with  some  accuracy  and  elegance ; 
therefore,  linguistic  training  has  had  great  impor- 
tance in  the  idea  of  cultivation.  The  conditions 
of  the  educated  world  have,  however,  changed  so 
profoundly  since  the  revival  of  learning  in  Italy 
that  our  inherited  ideas  concerning  training  in 
language  and  literature  have  required  large  modi- 
fications. In  the  year  1400,  it  might  have  been 
said  with  truth  that  there  was  but  one  language 
of  scholars,  the  Latin,  and  but  two  great  litera- 
tures, the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek.  Since  that 
42 


THF  CULTIVATED  MAN 

time,  however,  other  great  literatures  have  arisen, 
the  Italian,  Spanish,  French,  German,  and  above 
all  the  English,  which  has  become  incomparably 
the  most  extensive  and  various  and  the  noblest 
of  literatures.  Under  these  circumstances  it  is 
impossible  to  maintain  that  a  knowledge  of  any 
particular  literature  is  indispensable  to  culture. 
Yet  we  cannot  but  feel  that  the  cultivated  man 
ought  to  possess  a  considerable  acquaintance 
with  the  literature  of  some  great  language,  and 
the  power  to  use  the  native  language  in  a  pure 
and  interesting  way.  Thus,  we  are  not  sure  that 
Robert  Bums  could  be  properly  described  as  a 
cultivated  man,  moving  poet  though  he  was.  We 
do  not  think  of  Abraham  Lincoln  as  a  cultivated 
man,  master  of  English  speech  and  writing 
though  he  was.  These  men  do  not  correspond  to 
the  type  represented  by  the  word  "  cultivated," 
but  belong  in  the  class  of  geniuses.  When  we 
ask  ourselves  why  a  knowledge  of  literature 
seems  indispensable  to  the  ordinary  idea  of  cul- 
tivation, we  find  no  answer  except  this,  that  in 
literature  are  portrayed  all  human  passions,  de- 
sires, and  aspirations,  and  that  acquaintance  with 
43 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

these  human  feelings,  and  with  the  means  of 
portraying  them,  seems  to  us  essential  to  culture. 
These  human  qualities  and  powers  are  also  the 
commonest  ground  of  interesting  human  inter- 
course, and  therefore  literary  knowledge  exalts 
the  quality  and  enhances  the  enjoyment  of  hu- 
man intercourse.  It  is  in  conversation  that  culti- 
vation tells  as  much  as  anywhere,  and  this  rapid 
exchange  of  thoughts  is  by  far  the  commonest 
manifestation  of  its  power.  Combine  the  know- 
ledge of  literature  with  knowledge  of  the  "  stream 
of  the  world,"  and  you  have  united  two  large 
sources  of  the  influence  of  the  cultivated  person. 
The  linguistic  and  literary  element  in  cultivation 
therefore  abides,  but  has  become  vastly  broader 
than  formerly ;  so  broad,  indeed,  that  selection 
among  its  various  fields  is  forced  upon  every  edu- 
cated youth. 

III.  The  next  great  element  in  cultivation  to 
which  I  ask  your  attention  is  acquaintance  with 
some  part  of  the  store  of  knowledge  which  hu- 
manity in  its  progress  from  barbarism  has  ac- 
quired and  laid  up.  This  is  the  prodigious  store 
of  recorded,  rationalized,  and  systematized  dis- 
44 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

coveries,  experiences,  and  ideas.  This  is  the  store 
which  we  teachers  try  to  pass  on  to  the  rising 
generation.  The  capacity  to  assimilate  this  store 
and  improve  it  in  each  successive  generation  is 
the  distinction  of  the  human  race  over  other  ani- 
mals. It  is  too  vast  for  any  man  to  master,  though 
he  had  a  hundred  lives  instead  of  one ;  and  its 
growth  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  greater 
than  in  all  the  thirty  preceding  centuries  put 
together.  In  the  eighteenth  century  a  diligent 
student,  with  quick  powers  of  apprehension  and 
strong  memory,  need  not  have  despaired  of  mas- 
tering a  large  fraction  of  this  store  of  knowledge. 
Long  before  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century 
such  a  task  had  become  impossible.  Culture, 
therefore,  can  no  longer  imply  a  knowledge  of 
everything  —  not  even  a  little  knowledge  of 
everything.  It  must  be  content  with  general 
knowledge  of  some  things,  and  a  real  mastery  of 
some  small  portion  of  the  human  store.  Here  is 
a  profound  modification  of  the  idea  of  cultivation 
which  the  nineteenth  century  has  brought  about. 
What  portion  or  portions  of  the  infinite  human 
store  are  most  proper  to  the  cultivated  man  ?  The 
45 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

answer  must  be :  Those  which  enable  him,  with  his 
individual  personal  qualities,  to  deal  best  and  sym- 
pathize most  with  nature  and  with  other  human 
beings.  It  is  here  that  the  passion  for  service 
must  fuse  with  the  passion  for  knowledge.  It  is 
natural  to  imagine  that  the  young  man  who  has 
acquainted  himself  with  economics,  the  science 
of  government,  sociology,  and  the  history  of  civi- 
lization in  its  motives,  objects,  and  methods,  has 
a  better  chance  of  fusing  the  passion  for  know- 
ledge with  the  passion  for  doing  good  than  the 
man  whose  passion  for  pure  knowledge  leads  him 
to  the  study  of  chemical  or  physical  phenomena, 
or  of  the  habits  and  climatic  distribution  of  plants 
or  animals.  Yet,  so  intricate  are  the  relations 
of  human  beings  to  the  animate  and  inanimate 
creation  that  it  is  impossible  to  foresee  with  what 
realms  of  nature  intense  human  interests  may 
prove  to  be  identified.  Thus  the  generation  now 
on  the  stage  has  suddenly  learned  that  some  of 
the  most  sensitive  and  exquisite  human  interests, 
such  as  health  or  disease,  and  life  or  death  for 
those  we  love,  are  bound  up  with  the  life-histo- 
ries of  parasites  on  the  blood  corpuscles  or  of  cer- 
46 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

tain  varieties  of  mosquitoes  and  ticks.  When  the 
spectra  of  the  sun,  stars,  and  other  lights  began 
to  be  studied,  there  was  not  the  slightest  antici- 
pation that  a  cure  for  one  of  the  most  horrible 
diseases  to  which  mankind  is  liable  might  be 
found  in  the  X-rays.  While,  then,  we  can  still  see 
that  certain  subjects  afford  more  obvious  or  fre- 
quent access  to  means  of  doing  good  and  to  for- 
tunate intercourse  with  our  fellows  than  other 
subjects,  we  have  learned  that  there  is  no  field 
of  real  knowledge  which  may  not  suddenly  prove 
contributory  in  a  high  degree  to  human  happi- 
ness and  the  progress  of  civilization,  and  there- 
fore acceptable  as  a  worthy  element  in  the  truest 
culture. 

IV.  The  only  other  element  in  cultivation 
which  time  will  permit  me  to  treat  is  the  train- 
ing of  the  constructive  imagination.  The  imagi- 
nation is  the  greatest  of  human  powers,  no  mat- 
ter in  what  field  it  works  —  in  art  or  literature, 
in  mechanical  invention,  in  science,  government, 
commerce,  or  religion ;  and  the  training  of  the 
imagination  is,  therefore,  far  the  most  important 
part  of  education.  I  use  the  term  "constructive 
47 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

imagination  "  because  that  implies  the  creation 
or  building  of  a  new  thing.  The  sculptor,  for 
example,  imagines  or  conceives  the  perfect  form 
of  a  child  ten  years  of  age.  He  has  never  seen 
such  a  thing,  for  a  child  perfect  in  form  is  never 
produced ;  he  has  only  seen  in  different  children 
the  elements  of  perfection,  here  one  element  and 
there  another.  In  his  imagination  he  combines 
these  elements  of  the  perfect  form,  which  he  has 
only  seen  separated,  and  from  this  picture  in  his 
mind  he  carves  the  stone,  and  in  the  execution 
invariably  loses  his  ideal  —  that  is,  falls  short 
of  it,  or  fails  to  express  it.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
points  out  that  the  painter  can  picture  only  what 
he  has  somewhere  seen ;  but  that  the  more  he 
has  seen  and  noted,  the  surer  he  is  to  be  original 
in  his  painting,  because  his  imaginary  combina- 
tions will  be  original.  Constructive  imagination 
is  the  great  power  of  the  poet  as  well  as  of  the 
artist ;  and  the  nineteenth  century  has  convinced 
us  that  it  is  also  the  great  power  of  the  man  of 
science,  the  investigator,  and  the  natural  philo- 
sopher. What  gives  every  great  naturalist  or 
physicist  his  epoch-making  results  is  precisely 
48 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

the  imaginative  power  by  which  he  deduces 
from  masses  of  fact  the  guiding  hypothesis  or 
principle. 

The  educated  world  needs  to  recognize  the 
new  varieties  of  constructive  imagination.  Dante 
gave  painful  years  to  picturing  on  many  pages 
of  his  immortal  comedy  of  hell,  purgatory,  and 
paradise  the  most  horrible  monsters  and  tortures, 
and  the  most  loathsome  and  noisome  abomina- 
tions, that  his  fervid  imagination  could  concoct 
out  of  his  own  bitter  experiences  and  the  man- 
ners and  customs  of  his  cruel  times.  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  spent  many  laborious  years  in  searching 
for  and  putting  together  the  scattered  evidences 
that  the  geological  processes  by  which  the  crust 
of  the  earth  has  been  made  ready  for  the  use  of 
man  have  been,  in  the  main,  not  catastrophic,  but 
gradual  and  gentle ;  and  that  the  forces  which 
have  been  in  action  through  past  ages  are,  for 
the  most  part,  similar  to  those  we  may  see  to-day 
eroding  hills,  cutting  cations,  making  placers, 
marshes,  and  meadows,  and  forming  prairies  and 
ocean  floors.  He  first  imagined,  and  then  demon- 
strated, that  the  geologic  agencies  are  not  ex- 

49 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

plosive  and  cataclysmal,  but  steady  and  patient. 
These  two  kinds  of  imagination  —  Dante's  and 
Lyell's  —  are  not  comparable,  but  both  are  mani- 
festations of  great  human  power.  Zola  in  La 
Bite  humaine  contrives  that  ten  persons,  all  con- 
nected with  the  railroad  from  Paris  to  Havre, 
shall  be  either  murderers  or  murdered,  or  both, 
within  eighteen  months ;  and  he  adds  two  rail- 
road slaughters  criminally  procured.  The  condi- 
tions of  time  and  place  are  ingeniously  imagined, 
and  no  detail  is  omitted  which  can  heighten  the 
effect  of  this  homicidal  fiction.  Contrast  this  kind 
of  constructive  imagination  with  the  kind  which 
conceived  the  great  wells  sunk  in  the  solid  rock 
below  Niagara  that  contain  the  turbines,  that 
drive  the  dynamos,  that  generate  the  electric 
force  that  turns  thousands  of  wheels  and  lights 
thousands  of  lamps  over  hundreds  of  square  miles 
of  adjoining  territory ;  or  with  the  kind  which  con- 
ceives the  sending  of  human  thoughts  across  three 
thousand  miles  of  stormy  sea  instantaneously, 
on  nothing  more  substantial  than  ethereal  waves. 
There  is  no  crime,  cruelty,  or  lust  about  these 
last  two  sorts  of  imagining.  No  lurid  fire  of  hell 
50 


i 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

or  human  passion  illumines  their  scenes.  They 
are  calm,  accurate,  just,  and  responsible ;  and 
nothing  but  beneficence  and  increased  human 
well-being  results  from  them.  There  is  room  in 
the  hearts  of  twentieth-century  men  for  a  high 
admiration  of  these  kinds  of  imagination,  as  well 
as  for  that  of  the  poet,  artist,  or  dramatist. 

Another  kind  of  imagination  deserves  a  mo- 
ment's consideration  —  the  receptive  imagination 
which  entertains  and  holds  fast  the  visions  genius 
creates  or  the  analogies  of  nature  suggest.  A 
young  woman  is  absorbed  for  hours  in  conning 
the  squalid  scenes  and  situations  through  which 
Thackeray  portrays  the  malign  motives  and  un- 
clean soul  of  Becky  Sharp.  Another  young 
woman  watches  for  days  the  pairing,  nesting, 
brooding,  and  foraging  of  two  robins  that  have 
established  home  and  family  in  the  notch  of  a 
maple  near  her  window.  She  notes  the  unselfish 
labors  of  the  father  and  mother  for  each  other 
and  for  their  little  ones,  and  weaves  into  the 
simple  drama  all  sorts  of  protective  instincts  and 
human  affections.  Here  are  two  employments  for 
the  receptive  imagination.  Shall  systematic  edu- 
51 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

cation  compel  the  first,  but  make  no  room  for 
the  second  ?  The  increasing  attention  to  nature 
study  suggests  the  hope  that  the  imaginative 
study  of  human  ills  and  woes  is  not  to  be  allowed 
to  exclude  the  imaginative  study  of  nature,  and 
that  both  studies  may  count  toward  culture. 

It  is  one  lesson  of  the  nineteenth  century,  then, 
that  in  every  field  of  human  knowledge  the  con- 
structive imagination  finds  play — in  literature, 
in  history,  in  theology,  in  anthropology,  and  in 
the  whole  field  of  physical  and  biological  re- 
search. That  great  century  has  taught  us  that,  on 
the  whole,  the  scientific  imagination  is  quite  as 
productive  for  human  service  as  the  literary  or 
poetic  imagination.  The  imagination  of  Darwin 
or  Pasteur,  for  example,  is  as  high  and  produc- 
tive a  form  of  imagination  as  that  of  Dante,  or 
Goethe,  or  even  Shakespeare,  if  we  regard  the 
human  uses  which  result  from  the  exercise  of 
imaginative  powers,  and  mean  by  human  uses 
not  merely  meat  and  drink,  clothes  and  shelter, 
but  also  the  satisfaction  of  mental  and  spiritual 
needs.  We  must,  therefore,  allow  in  our  con- 
templation of  the  cultivated  man  a  large  expan- 
52 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

sion  of  the  fields  in  which  the  cultivated  imagi- 
nation may  be  exercised.  We  must  extend  our 
training  of  the  imagination  beyond  literature  and 
the  fine  arts,  to  history,  philosophy,  science, 
government,  and  sociology.  We  must  recognize 
the  prodigious  variety  of  fruits  of  the  imagina- 
tion that  the  last  century  has  given  to  our  race. 
It  results  from  this  brief  survey  that  the  ele- 
ments and  means  of  cultivation  are  much  more 
numerous  than  they  used  to  be ;  so  that  it  is  not 
wise  to  say  of  any  one  acquisition  or  faculty: 
With  it  cultivation  becomes  possible ;  without  it, 
impossible.  The  one  acquisition  or  faculty  may  be 
immense,  and  yet  cultivation  may  not  have  been 
attained.  Thus,  it  is  obvious  that  a  man  may 
have  a  wide  acquaintance  with  music,  and  pos- 
sess great  musical  skill  and  that  wonderful  im- 
aginative power  which  conceives  delicious  melo- 
dies and  harmonies  for  the  delight  of  mankind 
through  centuries,  and  yet  not  be  a  cultivated 
man  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the  words. 
We  have  met  artists  who  were  rude  and  un- 
couth, yet  possessed  a  high  degree  of  technical 
skill  and  strong  powers  of  imagination.  We  have 
53 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

seen  philanthropists  and  statesmen  whose  minds 
have  played  on  great  causes  and  great  affairs, 
and  yet  who  lacked  a  correct  use  of  their  native 
language,  and  had  no  historical  perspective  or 
background  of  historical  knowledge.  On  the 
other  hand,  is  there  any  single  acquisition  or 
faculty  which  is  essential  to  culture,  except,  in- 
deed, a  reasonably  accurate  and  refined  use  of 
the  mother-tongue  ?  Again,  though  we  can  dis- 
cern in  different  individuals  different  elements 
of  the  perfect  type  of  cultivated  man,  we  sel- 
dom find  combined  in  any  human  being  all  the 
elements  of  the  type.  Here,  as  in  painting  or 
sculpture,  we  make  up  our  ideal  from  traits 
picked  out  from  many  imperfect  individuals  and 
put  together.  We  must  not,  therefore,  expect 
systematic  education  to  produce  multitudes  of 
highly  cultivated  and  symmetrically  developed 
persons ;  the  multitudinous  product  will  always 
be  imperfect,  just  as  there  are  no  perfect  trees, 
animals,  flowers,  or  crystals. 

It  has  been  my  object  to  point  out  that  our 
conception  of  the  type  of  cultivated  man  has 
been  greatly  enlarged,  and  on  the  whole  exalted, 
54 


THE  CULTIVATED  MAN 

by  observation  of  the  experiences  of  mankind 
during  the  last  hundred  years.  Let  us  as  teach- 
ers accept  no  single  element  or  kind  of  culture 
as  the  one  essential ;  let  us  remember  that  the 
best  fruits  of  real  culture  are  an  open  mind, 
broad  sympathies,  and  respect  for  all  the  diverse 
achievements  of  the  human  intellect  at  what- 
ever stage  of  development  they  may  actually  be 
—  the  stage  of  fresh  discovery,  or  bold  explora- 
tion, or  complete  conquest.  Let  us  remember 
that  the  moral  elements  of  the  new  education 
are  individual  choice  of  studies  and  career  among 
a  great,  new  variety  of  studies  and  careers,  early 
responsibility  accompanying  this  freedom  of 
choice,  love  of  truth,  now  that  truth  may  be 
directly  sought  through  rational  inquiry,  and  an 
omnipresent  sense  of  social  obligation.  These 
moral  elements  are  so  strong  that  the  new  forms 
of  culture  are  likely  to  prove  themselves  quite 
as  productive  of  morality,  high-mindedness,  and 
idealism  as  the  old. 


OUTLINE 

I  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFiaENCY 

1.  The  meaning  of  efficiency i 

2.  Training  should  not  cease  with  youth i 

3.  All  education  comprehends  two  processes,  power 

and  knowledge 2 

4.  Two  accepted  propositions  relating  to  studies  .     .     5 

5.  The  training  and  care  of  the  body 6 

6.  The  habit  of  quick  and  concentrated  attention      .  1 1 

7.  The  power  of  consecutive  thinking 13 

8.  The  discernment  of  beauty  and  excellence  .    .    .18 

9.  The  lawful  and  productive  use  of  liberty  .     .     .    .21 

10.  The  passion  for  truth 23 

11.  The  motive  power  of  enthusiasm 27 

II  THE  NEW  DEFINITION  OF  THE  CULTIVATED 
MAN 

1.  The  cultivated  man  as  an  educational  end    ...  33 

2.  A  definition  of  the  truly  cultivated  man    ....  34 

3.  Cultivation,  not  genius,  our  standard 35 

4.  Science  and  service  modify  our  humanistic  cul- 

ture   3S 

5.  Skill  and  labor  are  essential  to  culture 37 

6.  The  increased  importance  of  character    ....  40 

57 


7.  The  power  of  literary  appreciation  and  expres- 

sion    42 

8.  The  necessary  knowledge  of  nature  and  men    .    .  44 

9.  The  training  of  the  imagination 47 

10.  Systematic  education  will  not  produce  perfect 

results 53 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   .  A 


M\)tt^iU  CDucatfonal  i^onograpl^iej 

Editor,  Henry  Suzzallo,  Professor  of  The  Philosophy  of 
Education,  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University,  New 
York. 

NUMBERS   READY  OR  IN  PREPARATION 

General  Educational  Theory 

EDUCATION.  An  essay  and  other  selections.  By  Ralph  Wau>o 
Emerson.  Ready. 

THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY,  and  The  Part  Played  by  Infancy  in 
the  Evolution  of  Man.  By  John  Fiskb.  Ready. 

EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY,  and  The  New  Definition  of  the  Cul- 
tivated  Man.  By  Chaxlss  W.  Eliot,  President.of  Harvard.Univeraitr. 

MORAL  PRINCIPLES  IN  EDUCATION.  By  John  Dbwby,  Professor 
of  Philosophy,  Columbia  University.  Ready. 

OUR  NATIONAL  IDEALS  IN  EDUCATION.  By  Elmbr  E. 
Brown,  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education.         In  preparation, 

THE  SCHOOL  AS  A  SOCIAL  INSTITUTION.  By  Hbnrv  Suzzallo, 
Professor  of  the  Philosophy  of  Education,  Teachers  College,  Columbia 
University.  In  preparation. 

Administration  and  Supervision  of  Schools 

CONTINUATION  SCHOOLS.  By  Paul  H.  Hanus,  Professor  of  Educa- 
tion, Harvard  University.  In  preparation. 
CHANGING  CONCEPTIONS  OF  EDUCATION   B;rE.  P.Cubbkrly, 
Professor  of  Education,  Leland  Stanford  Jr.  University. 

In  preparation. 

THE  SUPERVISION  OF  SCHOOLS.  By  Henry  Suzzallo,  Professor  of 

the  Philosophy  of  Education,  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University. 

In  preparation. 

Methods  of  Teaching 

SELF-CULTIVATION  IN  ENGLISH.  By  Gborgb  Hkrbbrt  Palmbk, 
Professor  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University.  Ready. 

ETHICAL  AND  MORAL  INSTRUCTION  IN  SCHOOLS.  By  Gborg* 
Hbrbbrt  Palmbr,  Professor  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University. 

Ready. 

TEACHING  CHILDREN  TO  STUDY.  By  Lida  B.  Earhart,  In- 
structor in  Elementary  Education,  Teachers  College,  Coltunba  Univer- 
sity. (Double  Number. )  Ready. 

TYPES  OF  TEACHING.  By  Fredbric  Ernbst  Farrington,  Asso- 
ciate Professor  of  Elducation,  University  of  Texas.  In  preparation. 


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